What is the political status of the federal bureaucracy? What is its power? How does the public view it? What essential functions do bureaucratic agencies and departments perform? How are individual departments and agencies organized? What types of departments and agencies exist? Controlling the bureaucracy can be difficult for the following reasons:. The president must lobby or persuade bureaucrats. For this reason, many presidents have seen the bureaucracy as an obstacle to getting their agendas approved.
The federal bureaucracy makes rules that affect how programs operate, and these rules must be obeyed, just as if they were laws. The rule-making process for government agencies occurs in stages. After Congress passes new regulatory laws, the agency charged with implementing the law proposes a series of rules, which are published in the Federal Register. Interested parties can comment on the rules, either at public hearings or by submitting documents to the agency. After the agency publishes the final regulations, it must wait sixty days before enforcing those rules.
During that time, Congress can review and change the rules if it desires. If Congress makes no changes, the rules go into effect at the end of sixty days. Federal regulations affect many groups of people, who have often challenged those regulations in court. Because litigation is a slow and expensive way to change regulations, Congress passed the Negotiated Rulemaking Act of to limit the need for litigation by opening the rulemaking process to those affected by it.
The act encouraged federal agencies to engage in negotiated rule-making. If an agency agrees to the proposed regulations, for example, it publishes the proposals in the Federal Register and then participates in a negotiating committee overseen by a third party. Agreements reached by the committee are then open to the normal public review process. Parties to negotiated rule-making agree not to sue over the rules.
All of these new programs required bureaucrats to run them, and the national bureaucracy naturally ballooned. Its size became a rallying cry for conservatives, who eventually elected Ronald Reagan president for the express purpose of reducing the bureaucracy.
While Reagan was able to work with Congress to reduce some aspects of the federal bureaucracy, he contributed to its expansion in other ways, particularly in his efforts to fight the Cold War. The two periods of increased bureaucratic growth in the United States, the s and the s, accomplished far more than expanding the size of government.
They transformed politics in ways that continue to shape political debate today. While the bureaucracies created in these two periods served important purposes, many at that time and even now argue that the expansion came with unacceptable costs, particularly economic costs.
The common argument that bureaucratic regulation smothers capitalist innovation was especially powerful in the Cold War environment of the s, 70s, and 80s. But as long as voters felt they were benefiting from the bureaucratic expansion, as they typically did, the political winds supported continued growth. As seen in this photograph, President Ronald Reagan frequently and intentionally dressed in casual clothing to symbolize his distance from the government machinery he loved to criticize.
In the s, however, Germany and Japan were thriving economies in positions to compete with U. This competition, combined with technological advances and the beginnings of computerization, began to eat away at American prosperity. Factories began to close, wages began to stagnate, inflation climbed, and the future seemed a little less bright.
In this environment, tax-paying workers were less likely to support generous welfare programs designed to end poverty. They felt these bureaucratic programs were adding to their misery in order to support unknown others. When he ran again four years later, his criticism of bureaucratic waste in Washington carried him to a landslide victory. While it is debatable whether Reagan actually reduced the size of government, he continued to wield rhetoric about bureaucratic waste to great political advantage.
Why might people be more sympathetic to bureaucratic growth during periods of prosperity? In what way do modern politicians continue to stir up popular animosity against bureaucracy to political advantage?
Is it effective? Why or why not? During the post-Jacksonian era of the nineteenth century, the common charge against the bureaucracy was that it was overly political and corrupt. This changed in the s as the United States began to create a modern civil service. The civil service grew once again in Franklin D. The most recent criticisms of the federal bureaucracy, notably under Ronald Reagan, emerged following the second great expansion of the federal government under Lyndon B Johnson in the s.
Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Module The Bureaucracy. Search for:. Bureaucracy and the Evolution of Public Administration Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define bureaucracy and bureaucrat Describe the evolution and growth of public administration in the United States Identify the reasons people undertake civil service.
Practice Questions 1. Briefly explain the underlying reason for the emergence of the spoils system. Show Glossary bureaucracy an administrative group of nonelected officials charged with carrying out functions connected to a series of policies and programs bureaucrats the civil servants or political appointees who fill nonelected positions in government and make up the bureaucracy civil servants the individuals who fill nonelected positions in government and make up the bureaucracy; also known as bureaucrats merit system a system of filling civil service positions by using competitive examinations to value experience and competence over political loyalties patronage the use of government positions to reward individuals for their political support public administration the implementation of public policy as well as the academic study that prepares civil servants to work in government spoils system a system that rewards political loyalties or party support during elections with bureaucratic appointments after victory.
For general information on ancient bureaucracies see Amanda Summer. Archaeology 65, No. The Bible Archaeologist 40, No. Public Administration: Concepts and Cases. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. New York: Penguin Press. Fiscal Administration , 9th ed. Boston: Cengage.
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